It has been several decades since the emergence of the first recognized computer virus. The infectious behavior of computer viruses gave them their name--an analogy to the original biological variety. The book’s goal is to draw this connection more closely and explicitly.

It is a short book: only 140 pages of text, with the remaining 16 for references and an index. The text is divided into seven chapters. Of these, the first and the last are an introduction and a summary/review, respectively. The five chapters in between contain the substance of the book.

The second chapter is an overview of the molecular biology of viruses. Differences are drawn between totally inanimate materials and bacteria and higher life forms. The importance of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) as the vehicles for the code is a central concept for explaining the self-replication of the virus as it takes over the cell’s functions. This chapter concludes with a discussion of prions, that is, misfolded proteins (for example, “mad cow disease”) that replicate themselves by inducing healthy, properly folded proteins to change their folding patterns. Prions are examples of biological self-replication not involving nucleic acids.

The third and fourth chapters switch over to computer technology, starting with a short review of categories of algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) in chapter 3 and a discussion of the self-replication of computer viruses and worms and how they relate to biological viruses in chapter 4. Chapter 5’s topic is information theory and how it is expressed in biological coding and technology. Additional comments are made on epigenetics (the effects of environmental factors on the expression of RNA and DNA) and, again, prions. The sixth chapter is a philosophical reflection on the possibility of finding a convergence of life and technology through the self-replication of autonomous entities based on AI and robotics.

The book seems to be both too short and too long at the same time. As for being too short, the description of computer viruses, worms, and other malware lacks sufficient detail to show the extent by which these software problems are analogous to (and different from) biological viruses. Likewise, the discussion of the applicability of information theory to both types of viruses is simultaneously too sketchy and generalized to perceive its utility in the discussion. As for being too long, there are sections that are repetitive, verbose, and tangential to the general theme of self-replicating entities. Of course, robots that have the intelligence and autonomy to construct their own progeny is an interesting speculation, but this and similar digressions distract from the principal issue of how self-replicating viruses of both kinds are the same and are different. Unfortunately, this book was disappointing.